Digg’s (Potential) Legal Woes
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In light of the recent hoopla, could Digg die?
After trying to keep an HD DVD crack from being linked on
its site, Digg was subjected to an onslaught of users resubmitting the code
faster than the posts could be deleted. Eventually, Digg decided to stop trying
to censor the submissions.
Digg founder Kevin Rose has hinted at the possibility of
Digg’s being sued, and possibly even shut down. Could this happen?
Yes.
The case is similar in some ways to the YouTube lawsuit.
A website that hosts illegal material posted by users is being sued by the
copyright owners. Digg’s situation is a little different, though.
Unfortunately, Digg’s case is probably weaker.
large part on a section of the Copyright Act that provides a safe harbor for web
hosts with copyright-infringing material if, stated briefly, the host doesn’t
know the material is infringing, it doesn’t gain financially directly from the
infringement, and it removes or blocks access to the material once it is
notified of the infringement.
different grounds: trafficking in technology designed to circumvent
technologies that restrict access to copyright work under section 1201(a) of
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Recent judicial decisions suggest
that even providing links to circumvention technology may violate the DMCA. Strictly
speaking, this is not a copyright infringement issue, which means the safe
harbor provision YouTube relies on is probably not available.
litigious and would have a strong case. At least one person thinks Digg might
be able to win, but I’m not so sure. The law is clearly against Digg. To
prevail, it would probably have to be on some other grounds. The DMCA
provisions might be held unconstitutional (good luck!), or perhaps Digg could
argue that its users, not Digg itelf, are responsible for the posting and that
the website made a good-faith effort to remove the material.
*Update* Whatever ends up happening, Digg is getting some good press in the here and now. Check out the latest from the New York Times and BusinessWeek.
2 Comments 
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May 2nd, 2007 at 10:36 pm
Dear author… Digg is like a small city. It is run by ten thousand people - who volunteer their time for free… and also by a handful of paid staff. The staff cannot logistically be held responsible for the actions of hundreds or thousands of people acting at once. There’s nothing they can do, except shut the site down - which isn’t fair either. It’s like suing the mayor of a town, when some demonstrators were doing something scandalous in the park, down the street. Digg is not like a magazine - which has editorial control over a handful of things it prints each month. That’s not it’s nature. Can the mpaa sue? Can the mpaa win? Maybe they can. However, I really think that the mpaa bears full responsibility for this problem. They put all their eggs into one basket. All it shows, is that in this internet age, the mpaa is not an efficient or competent go-to person, for the distribution of film. Filmmakers and film studios will have to start each developing their own DRM schema - just like software writers do.
May 3rd, 2007 at 12:34 am
What I would like to see is the 15,000 diggers that sat at their desks, ‘protesting’ censorship by making a few mouse clicks, actually take a stand if the MPAA does take legal action against digg. Let’s see how the diggers respond when the suits come in. ‘Digg this if you hate the MPAA’ won’t do a damn thing…
Nick
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